“When any blood gushing from its wounds
stained the skin, some men, placed there
for the purpose, immediately washed it off,
to make the spectators take more particular
note of its whiteness.”

do you make us animals

we are animals

(the women the worst)

>>>

the student cultivates a false sense
of security (marchons, marchons)

distance like an exposition
and that sly frisson
we’re human too
(getting nasty)

who can resist
their place in history
choice a banality in the supermarket

— don’t grovel

>>>

words
cream
gorge
rising

fuelled/fooled/food
a substance in the blood
this holy madness blest
by writ & rote

meet the new boss

the usual shapes
blunt but effective

victims of language
trundled off by analogy
splintered into
adjectives on the platform
gloating the body
momentarily
real

their hands

>>>

the doctors have examined her
the priests have examined her
the judges etc.

what is the right end of a woman?

she, too, examines herself
no mark
but Maid

this matter of voices

there’s the difficulty

what will burn

we fear the indestructible

which has no shape and slips
the righteous knife

clouds

could make nothing of it

severally

dally and boss

belie/belief and willing trade

hum an it eee

meta meta

matter

and, as
he stoked his sluggd
moustache he succeeded
in conveying both the indubitably masculine
nature of such a possession
(as it were/ as you are)
along with a nuanced frivolity
a pinch of magritte between the sheets
a competent
sentence, marshals, pointed
in one
apparent direction

(& yes I am
put out)

(that knows
where it’s going)

(or seems)
(or seams)

(or passages ill-lit for sojourn
a weary day, its paws
its face to face

Who could be heard saying
you’d bend to hear
her faith in words & wrongly
placed as tongues, brains
gotcha

child raw
livid/loved

by any
light encumbered

unchart the deep & matchless
be

Dancing sideways

1. Thumbtack the slippery mystery.

2. Portents of disaster. Who doesn’t lock their doors these days

3. Dove down and wing it.

4. The rain’s forgiveness bids us breathe. A green break.

5. Even the statues. Grip.

6. Beak and splay, carol a high calling.

7. For Insouciance in the face of Malice. Well done, lads.

8. Seething saucepans, a kettle requiring immediate attention.

9. Resisting metaphor, you slippery sod. Come back here.

10. Bloated bodies by the bank. Some, children.

11. Cursory pagan over dinner, TV enjoins the singing heads.

12. The moon’s never far, this pool and eddy.

13. Bearing the stripped rod of devotion.

14. At the time it seemed and I can honestly say although in hindsight to have done otherwise them’s the breaks don’t mean this flippant can’t quite express these sincerest apologies.

15. Glib circle, your days are numbered.

16. Clothed in white. Flowers for the ladies. Died well. And even singing.

17. Arching its back the desert’s licked, wind-clean.

18. Unsustainable magnificence. Wait.

19. Swarthy jug. Ubiquitous belly. Common enough.

20. Confused by the nature of the feast.

21. The bridge of rejoinders, the gates of rhetoric, the armies of circumlocution. Forward march.